Friday, July 2

Colonial Bread for the 4th!

Guess what?!? I've stayed away from white sugar and white flour (and other foods with ingredients I can't pronounce or that look chemical-ish) for a whole week now. So I have had this internal debate with the 4th of July weekend -- do I take a little vacation from this processed food ban, just for the weekend?I haven't answered my question yet, but for the food post today as I pondered all the red, white, and blue, cute cupcakes and cookies I could make with all the colorful food dyes and all the white flour and white sugar I decided to stay healthy yet a little longer and go the historical route.

I looked up "food eaten in 1776" on Google, and I found this Colonial Bread recipe on cooks.com. So for any of you who want to go authentic and teach your kids some history about how, what, and when the 4th started, here's the recipe for you while you give them a history lesson (I know you home-schoolers already have this down!)

Here's the recipe (I made a few changes).

The soaking corn meal.

The first change is that I made my bread in the bread machine. I know, I know, they didn't have bread machines in 1776, but I'm glad I have one!

Second change is, I used 1 Tblsp of yeast (my yeast is in bulk in the freezer). I used a little more (a pkg has 2 1/2 tsp) because I used whole wheat flour instead of bread flour -- which is the 3rd change.

So here is the yeast, flour, salt, and butter.

It was fun adding the molasses; it would bead up as it trickled down the flour.

I was surprised to see how bright yellow the soaked corn meal was. With the corn meal on top of the molasses, it looked like an inverted sunflower (or not ~).

Last change: I didn't divide the dough into 2 loaves, I just did one loaf and put it on a cookie sheet to rise and bake. It looks like a giant hot cross bun!

While it baked and after I took it out of the oven, it smelled really good, but I was still curious how it would taste because the only sweetener in it was the molasses (if you can call molasses sweet).

I cut off a little end to taste. Well I guess a circle doesn't have an end, so I cut off some of the edge and buttered it and put honey on only half of the slice.

Oh my, it was soooo good, the molasses gave it a different flavor that I can't describe, and I really liked it. The crust was crispy, giving it an "old colonial" feel. I ate it up so fast I didn't even notice the side without honey as being any different from the side with honey.